familypediawikiaorg-20200214-history
Category talk:Valid name- nation
Questions which should be clarified The documentation indicates that the Pattern must be : Category:Valid name- {geography unit} of {placename} where geography unit should be locality, county or subdivision, nothing else. :::placename should be the name of a place exactly as it is presented in the title of the article in english Wikipedia. There are however some questions which need to be clarified. Question 1 What happens if placenames refers to a settlement which has no article in en:Wikipedia, for instance o commune in France or Albania which does not have articles in Wikipedia? This is not theoretical because I have run across such cases. Other questions are related to how the various valid name categories have been applied in Familypedia. If the way they are used is correct this should be mentioned in the documentation. If not, then the categories should be modified so as to comply with the rules. Question 2 The system includes category Valid name- nation, which has been used for nations and countries such as France or United States. :::2.1 Is this correct as geography unit should not be nation? If so this should be mentioned. :::2.2 If is is correct, could this also include (according to the general pattern) categories such as Valid name- nation of Europe ? Question 3 The system includes categories Valid name- nation-subdiv1 which has you have applied to various articles such as Connecticut. :::3.1 Does nation-subdiv1 replace the subdivision as geography unit as the system does not have any articles with the category Valid name- subdivision? :::3.2 Would, according to the general pattern, categories such as Valid name- nation-subdiv1 of Austria be acceptable? Question 4. At present none of the existing Valid names for Counties has any entries in which the the structure of is used. The pattern including county of {nameplace} is never used. Instead the pattern Valid name- county- {placename} is used, ommitting the word "of". :::4.1 Would categories such as Category:Valid name- County of Hungary be acceptable? :::4.2 Is the alternative used at present, such as Category:Valid name- County- Hungary correct? :::4.3 Are both forms correct? Question 5 While the instructions indicate that geography unit should include only locality, the system includes both the forms locality and localities. For instance, Category: Valid name- locality- New South Wales is a subcategory of Category: Valid name- localities of Australia :::5.1 Are both locality and localities acceptable? :::5.2 Again, as in the case for counties, are categories having the structure Category:Valid name- geography unit- placename (i.e where the placename is not preceded by of but by a hyphen acceptable? Question 6 The system includes also Category: Valid name- district- Czech Republic or Valid name- region- Slovakia or Valid name- state- Austria or Valid name- voivodeship- Poland :::6.1 Is district acceptable as geography unit :::6.2 If not, should the geography unit be replaced with county or subdivision? :::6.3.Again the question about the hyphen replacing the word "of" Question 7 In many cases the nameplace has been omitted. Thus for the States of the USA (such as Connecticut or Michigan) the form Valid name- nation-subdiv1 has been adopted, without indicating the placename. As there could be nation subdivisions in many country, would it not be preferable to use Valid name- nation-subdiv1 of United States so as to differentiate from Valid name- nation-subdiv1 of Germany which would be used for Lower Saxony or Valid name- nation-subdiv1 of Australia which would be used for Queensland? Afil 02:11, February 15, 2012 (UTC) Robin's first responses That's a lot of questions with no subject-headings! I've had a quick look through. I guess Andrei hasn't set his preferences ("Show hidden categories") so as to be aware of the higher-level hidden category:Facts valid names, where I had (on its talk page) asked some questions that seem to overlap with some of Andrei's concerns. My first point was about the "hyphen or of" matter, where the very first examples apparently contradicted the documentation rules. The category author has not replied. That category has a glaring inconsistency right from the start. Pasting a copy: This category has the following 4 subcategories, out of 4 total. c * + Valid name- county (62) l * + Valid name- localities (11) n * + Valid name- nation (9) * + Valid name- nation-subdiv1 (83) Rather than moving Andrei's questions to the higher-level, I'm happy to continue some discussion here. I won't try to deal with every question today. What these do As noted at the top of one or more categories, the main use of these is providing a list for autocompletion of Form:Person. I doubt if anyone except me is using that at present. Forum:Do you use the forms? If we ever get it fixed, these "valid name" categories will be useful to many more people. For now, I doubt if they're worth spending time on. Much more important is the code-cracking that results in restoring the usability of the form. They provide almost instantaneous lists of options when you type a letter or two in a "place" box. Type "u" in the "nation" box and you get three options, with "United Kingdom" highlighted because it's first; "down arrow" if you want to reach another one; hit "enter" to get the highlighted one entered. Beautifully quick. Works even better for long US state and county names. Not yet many locality names, so I seldom score with them. The coding requires the place page to be in the correct "valid name" category, one of the above four. I can't imagine why User:Phlox left "localities" instead of matching the singular number of the others, but he was a little careless with typos occasionally. The others match property names; but the precise name of the category is of no concern if people use the same name as the form-display code uses. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:18, February 15, 2012 (UTC) :I don't see why you say "one of the above four": what I see on (to reiterate) is: :*Property XXX_nation uses Category:Valid name- nation :*Property XXX_nation-subdiv1 uses Category:Valid name- nation-subdiv1 :*Property XXX_county uses Category:Counties by country :*Property XXX_locality uses Category:Valid name- locality :Where are you reading your list from? :Thurstan 19:35, February 15, 2012 (UTC) ::Sorry, I hadn't looked at that for a year or three. I just assumed that they all used "valid name" categories (the four listed in the parent category, which I had shown above) as they did at first. Now I see that Phlox changed that in Sept '09 "(Temp assign to Cat:Counties by country, not valid names county) ". No apparent explanation. The "temp" aspect of the nonconformity seems to have been forgotten. Can you see any good reason for keeping the inconsistency? (Of course, there are two or more ways of removing the inconsistency: one could be to use other categories to replace all of the "valid name" categories. If we have or could have categories for other fields similar to "Counties by country" - an easy name to understand and remember - we might have a winner.) -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:46, February 16, 2012 (UTC) Note that "autocompletion" seems to actually drill down through the subcategories, which explains some of the anomolies I have reported. If I type "E" into a "nation-subdiv1" field, the first choice I am offered is Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (1500-1558). He is in Category:Rulers of Styria, which is in Category:Styria, which is in Category:Valid name- nation-subdiv1: this last inclusion is wrong, such categories should not be in the "Valid name" categories. Thurstan 20:02, February 15, 2012 (UTC) Further divisions Question 7 suggests that Andrei has misunderstood "nation-subdiv1": it's just the state name. The "county" one is where the correct form contains both the county name and the state (in USA) but contains only the county name for some other countries such as UK. In the long term we may (with the help of improvements to the Semantic Forms software, apparently only just being developed) be able to have the autocompletion more targeted if the system knows which higher-level location has been chosen. For example, if I enter "Austria" in the nation box my autocompletion may be restricted to places that are in "Valid name- state- Austria". Some of Andrei's earlier questions may be best left until that is an option. Phlox may have anticipated that development of the software or may have been working on producing his version of it. Another look through his copious notes may detect that. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:18, February 15, 2012 (UTC) What is to be done This discussion has shown that there are some "fixes" to be done. I propose: # Create and populate Category:Valid name- locality # Modify to use Category:Valid name- county (and populate it) rather than Category:Counties by country # Remove all subcategories from the "Valid name" categories (except for other "Valid name" categories as appropriate). Thurstan 00:49, February 16, 2012 (UTC) :On #1, we could initially redirect Phlox's blunder Category:Valid name- localities. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:52, February 16, 2012 (UTC) :On #2, there's an alternative that I've just suggested above in replying to your correction. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:52, February 16, 2012 (UTC) ::No, that is not a valid alternative, because there will be other subcategories, which break requirement #3: we need categories which only contain "valid name" pages, not people pages. See my comments above. Thurstan 04:03, February 16, 2012 (UTC) Should not include former nations Our place fields are meant to have current names. Several empires and other historic names should be removed from the category. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:50, November 5, 2015 (UTC)